Shall I Stay or Shall I Go?

If I Stay by Gayle Forman
5Q 4P; Audience: J/S

It's no secret that a lot of teens fight with their parents on a regular basis and are waiting impatiently to graduate high school and go to college, preferably someplace away. Mia is not one of those teens. Her family is close. They don't just love each other, they like each other and enjoy spending time together. So when there's a rare snow day in their little part of Oregon, Mia's parents decide it's a perfect day for a family car trip and Mia and her little brother Teddy enthusiastically agree. The snow's not the kind that amounts to anything, so they figure it's perfectly safe. It's not. The four of them are happily talking and listening to music when a four-ton pickup truck going sixty miles per hour plows into them so hard the force of it tears off the doors and pushes the passenger seat clear through the driver's side window.

You don't walk away from an accident like that. Except...Mia does. When the sounds of the crash stop echoing, she can still hear Beethoven's Cello Sonata no. 3 playing. She walks up the embankment and sees the devastation: the crumpled car, the pipe in her father's pocket and his brains scattered on the pavement, her mother's blue lips and red eyes that make her look more like a zombie than someone who was laughing and breathing and living just two minutes ago. But where is Teddy? She frantically searches for a sign of him. There! His hand, sticking out a ditch! But when she gets closer, she realizes the hand sticking out of the ditch isn't Teddy's. It's wearing her bracelet, and the body is wearing her clothing. The body isn't Teddy's. It's hers. No, you don't walk away from an accident like that.

Mia doesn't understand what's going on, why she and her body seem to be two separate things. What she does understand is that her parents are dead and her brother is badly injured. She understands that she can walk, invisible, among her doctors, her friends, and her relatives. She can hear their conversations, but she can't communicate with them. She can only watch them as they sit in the waiting room or by her bedside, grieving and loving. It is a nurse's comment that eventually gives her a clue. If she's "running the show", does that mean that if she lives or dies is up to her? If so, should she stay or should she go? How you make a decision like that?

Musings:
The love in this book is almost palpable. Reading Mia's flashbacks of times spent with her family made me wish I could be a part of their circle. Teddy is adorable, and Mia's parents, both music-loving former hippies, are wise, loving, and totally cool. Two weeks after finishing the book, Mia's father still feels real to me. I melted a little when Mia described his transition from hippie to middle school teacher, and I'm getting a warm feeling from just remembering how he and her mother talked Mia through her first-recital fears. These were good people. Mia's boyfriend Adam is just as likable. He's a rocker and she's a classical cellist. Despite that seemingly wide difference in sensibilities, music both brings and binds them together. The expression "She played me like a cello" has a whole new (and fairly erotic) meaning for me now. Mia is not a romantic. Even as she describes their tender moments and first kisses, she doesn't try to pretend that the relationship didn't have less rosy moments or that she wasn't always secure in it. There's a maturity to their relationship and the way she understands it that resonates.

Music is a constant thread throughout the book. Whether it's rock or classical, music is the common language, and it doesn't matter that they aren't speaking the same dialect. Music is love, and love is music. The book is music is love.

If I Stay is heartbreaking and poignant, life-affirming, and powerful in its simplicity and depth. I can't wait to share it with other readers.

An Absolutely Truly Good Book

I was going to combine two books into one post again, but I went on so long on this one, I need to split the posts up. But both books are about boys coming of age. And because both authors well remember what it was like to be a teenage boy, both books have passages that may raise an eyebrow or two in some teacher/parental circles. Boys, on the other hand, won't bat an eye and will eat these books up. And both are also those rarest of things: books for older teenage boys that will make them laugh. Out loud, even. We don't get very many of those. (I don't know if they'll admit this, but they'll probably shed a tear or two, too. At the very least, they'll want to.)

The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
4Q 4P    J/S (recommended for 8th grade and up)

Let me introduce you to Arnold Spirit, otherwise known as Junior. He's a teenager growing up on the Spokane Indian reservation with an alcoholic father, a fantastically intelligent mother who gave up her college dreams, a wise grandmother, and a sister who spends her life in the basement dreaming (or giving up on her dreams) of being a writer. They are, like so many on the rez, very poor - in everything but love. That, they have plenty of. Junior is not a fine physical specimen. He has fluid on the brain, too many teeth, bad eyes, a stutter, a lisp, and seizures. He enjoys drawing cartoons, reading, basketball, and masturbating (he's upfront about that, so I might as well be, too). He is also very intelligent. The day he walks into his new geometry class and discovers that the textbook he is using was his mother's - which means it's at least thirty years old - is the day he decides he wants something more out of life than this. More than that, he deserves something more. The only way he can get it is by leaving the reservation and going to Reardon, the all-white school twenty miles away. His parents are supportive, but nobody else is. Even his only friend, Rowdy, is angry at him for betraying his tribe. When he gets to his new school, he's even more of an outsider than he is at home. Nobody knows what to make of this odd looking Indian boy. But slowly - very slowly - Junior begins to find a place in this new school. He's befriended by a boy who is even geekier than he is (he gets off - really gets off - on visiting the school library), he joins the basketball team, and he even gets a (lily white) girlfriend. But when he travels with his new team to play his old team on the rez, he realizes that some people will never forgive him for having dreams. But nothing they or life can throw at him will stop him from working to make those dreams come true.

This book is exactly what the title says it is: Sherman Alexie's slightly fictionalized version of his own life. There's a great deal of sadness and violence in it, which comes with the territory when you're writing about a life where everyone is poor, many are alcoholics, and most have given up their dreams. But there is also a tremendous sense of humor and hope.

A few random quotes:

[Rowdy] likes to pretend that he lives inside the comic books. I guess a fake life inside a cartoon is a lot better than his real life. So I draw cartoons to make him happy, to give him other worlds to live inside. I draw his dreams.

Prelude to a fight:

It was lunchtime and I was standing outside by the weird sculpture that was supposed to be an Indian. I was studying the sky like I was an astronomer, except it was daytime and I didn't have a telescope, so I was just an idiot. Roger the Giant and his gang of giants strutted over to me...I stared at Roger and tried to look tough. I read once that you can scare away a charging bear if you wave your arms and look big. But I figured I'd just look like a terrified idiot having an arm seizure.

Conversations with Gordy (his geeky new Reardon friend):

"Don't you hate PCs? They are sickly and fragile and vulnerable to viruses. PCs are like French people living during the bubonic plague." Wow, and people thought I was a freak.

"I draw cartoons," I said. "What's your point?" Gordy asked. "I take them seriously. I use them to understand the world. I use them to make fun of the world. To make fun of people. And sometimes I draw people because they're my friends and family. And I want to honor them." "So you take your cartoons as seriously as you take books?" "Yeah, I do, I said. "That's kind of pathetic, isn't it?" "No, not at all," Gordy said. "If you're good at it, and you love it, and it helps you navigate the river of the world, then it can't be wrong." Wow, this dude was a poet. My cartoons weren't just good for giggles; they were also good for poetry. Funny poetry, but poetry nonetheless. It was seriously funny stuff.

I was trying to keep this short, and it's not. So I'll stop here and just add one more comment. This book has gotten a huge amount of attention, including winning the 2007 National Book Award in the Young People's Literature category. I predict it will win the Printz Award on January 14, 2008 (if it doesn't, it will certainly be an Honor book). I liked this book a lot, but I'm not really convinced that it's the best book of the year written for teens. There's a lot to like about it, and the characters, particular Junior, are unforgettable. I've been rereading it as I tried to write this up and look for appropriate quotes, and I got involved in the story all over again. There are parts that are screamingly funny and parts that are achingly sad. But still, there's a bit of a disconnect for me. I think something I read elsewhere pinpointed what it is: something about the writing style makes it seems as though it's aimed at a younger audience. Don't be fooled. This is definitely a novel for high school teens (adults, too).

The Skinny on SKIN

Skin by Adrienne Maria Vrettos
5Q 3P J/S (for those who need to know, language could be an issue for some)

Karen and Donnie aren't just brother and sister, they're allies. For as long as Donnie can remember, Karen has been there for him. When things got bad between their parents, they'd sit out on the steps (sometimes for hours) while the battle raged inside. Karen would always distract him and keep him company. She's there for him in other ways, too. Donnie is not exactly a popular kid. As he says, he and his friends are "the end of the line...the ones people look at and think, At least I'm not them." Instead of trying to steer clear of her nerdy little brother, Karen often lets him hang with her. She's his best friend.

The first signs of trouble appear about the time that Donnie and his family head to the lake for the summer. That's the first time that Karen refuses to eat. When they stop at a roadside diner, Karen's mother tries to tempt her with fries. Karen throws them out the window of the moving car. Still, nobody actually thinks there's a problem. Karen's just being a moody teenager. On the other hand, when Dad says he has to go back to work in the middle of the summer, they pretty much know that something's wrong. But just as with Karen's eating habits, it's easier to pretend that everything's okay. And actually, things are pretty good for Donnie. After all, he gets to hang out with Karen and her (really hot) best friend Amanda all summer long, and they have a blast together. Life is good, even if Dad's not there.

But then summer ends, and the good times end, too.

Donnie is a good at convincing himself that things are okay. His friends are jerks who don't really like him? Well, at least he isn't eating lunch alone. Dad doesn't come home anymore? Well, at least he calls. Karen's not eating? Well, at first, Donnie tries to pretend it's not a problem. But even he isn't that good at pretending. He can't ignore the dinner-time battles. He can't ignore how it is affecting Karen's friendship with Amanda. He can't ignore Karen's hospitalizations. He can't ignore the tension in the house. He can't ignore that he's turning invisible as far as his parents are concerned. But most of all, he can't ignore the fact that his best friend and ally is dieting herself into nothingness until she's going...going...gone.

Musings:

I was really moved by this book. It's another one that made my heart hurt. I also got really angry at times. It made me realize how important it is to remember that a crisis for one family member is a crisis for all of them, even if (as in this case) siblings seem to be handling things well on the surface. In the end, I don't know who I felt worse for, Karen or Donnie. I know I wanted to shake them both, and I know I wanted to hug them both even harder. This is a beautifully written book and an achingly painful, poignant read.

Adrienne Vrettos has a web site, a blog, and a MySpace page. She also has a new book coming out. If it's anything close to as good as Skin, it'll be another winner. Here's a link to chapter one of Sight.

Quotes:

I've seen dead things before. I know a dead thing looks smaller than when it was alive. My sister looks like she could fold inside a paper cup. (p. 3)

I hate to see Mom like this. She's like an open wound waiting for salt. (p. 66)

Karen and Mom have been fighting and making up every other day. One day they're screaming at each other, and the next Karen's practically in Mom's lap while she makes tiny braids in Karen's hair. It's like there's a hiccup in the way time works, and they can only live the same two days over and over again...[They] have been circling each other all night...Mom watches Karen closely, and Karen pretends not to notice. I think Mom is having some sort of out-of-body experience. She walks around like she doesn't recognize our house or her family, and what she does see puts dark shadows on her face. (p. 113)

I'm becoming invisible. Every day more and more light shines through me...Once I realized that I was becoming invisible, once I realized that no one really noticed me anymore, I stopped fighting it. (pp. 119-120)

Mom and Karen are still at the table in the kitchen. An hour ago I could tell by the way Karen kept rearranging the rice on her plate that they'd end of sitting like this, Mom's plate empty and Karen's heavy with cold food. When she first got back from the hospital, I felt like I was part of a football team made up of all the people set on keeping her well. Her nutritionist. Her doctor. Her therapist. Mom. Dad. And me-the one that no one had asked to join the team, but who kept showing up to practice. I pictured us all in team jerseys standing firmly with arms crossed in front of us, daring Karen's sickness to try to get past. I thought we'd be strong enough. (p. 121)

When [Karen's] here and we all eat together, every bite is like your teeth don't just cut into the food, they cut into everything that's wrong in this house, and the taste can choke you. (p. 155)

I cheered when Donnie finally yelled, "This is happening to me too, you know!" Everyone around him, from his parents to his teachers, seem so oblivious to the fact that Donnie needs help and support, too. It took a long time for Donnie to stand up for himself and let people know that he is not invisible. If people aren't going to be there for him, I'm relieved that he's showing signs of being there for himself.

My booktalk can be found here.

Billie Standish (the book and the girl) Needs Some Love

Billie Standish Was Here by Nancy Crocker
5Q 3P J/S (mature subject matter, including a rape, makes this a book for older/mature readers)


This is an absolutely beautifully written book that I suspect will not get the attention it deserves. At this point, it's on my shortlist of the best YA books of the year. I would not hesitate to recommend it to adult readers as well as teens. However, it's a book that will be best appreciated by readers who enjoy characterization and setting, rather than those who prefer fast-moving action. I don't think what I say here truly spoils the book. It all happens in the first fifty or so pages. The book is about the journey, not the individual stops made along the way. But you may disagree, so please be forewarned that this review reveals two major events. If you prefer to read something that is more circumspect, check this review/interview from Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast. (This review, from Big A, little a, is the one that got me interested in reading the book. But be aware that this review also gives away those two plot points.)


Billie Standish knows exactly where she stands in her parents' lives. It's pretty clear when your name is William Marie Standish that a girl wasn't what they hoping for. The fact that they rarely talk to her and leave her alone for hours at a time just reinforces their lack of interest. But the morning that eleven-year-old Billie wakes up to find the town deserted really hammers it home. It's not until the old lady who lives across the street tells her that the levee is expected to break and flood the town that she has any idea of the danger she's in. Miss Lydia explains that the only people left are Billie and her parents and Miss Lydia and her son. And her parents never gave her even as much as a warning of what to do if trouble came. Miss Lydia takes pity on Billie and invites her to come to lunch. As Billie says, she'd rather have gone to church in shoes two sizes too small. She's no good at chitchat in the first place, but having to make conversation with someone who could remember when God was a boy? Oh, no.

But Miss Lydia insists, and Billie gives in. It's not long before Billie is over at Miss Lydia's most of every day, doing chores for her and in exchange learning about cooking and crochet and the old days of Miss Lydia's youth. She basks in the feeling of being welcomed and liked. As the weeks pass, Billie realizes she's made her first friend.

The one fly in the ointment is Miss Lydia's son, Curtis. Curtis gives Billie the creeps. She doesn't like the way he treats his mother and she doesn't like the way he looks at her. She knows Curtis's reputation, and she knows that he once killed a girl in a drunk driving accident. But she doesn't know just how bad he can be until the day he brutally rapes her. One horror follows another when Miss Lydia discovers what has happened and takes the law into her own hands. She has seen her son destroy one girl's life. She's damned if she's going to allow him to destroy another.

It is 1968, and rape is a shameful secret that is never discussed. And, of course, neither of them can ever tell what Miss Lydia did. As close as they had been, their secrets draw them even closer together. It is Miss Lydia who helps her deal with the aftermath, sharing her own equally traumatic experiences and assuring her that in time, she will be able to trust, and even love, again. The only person she can bear to be near is Miss Lydia. But when fifth grade starts in the fall, Billie has to go. School has never been her favorite place. The teachers are bad, the girls are clique-y, and she has always been the odd person out. But here, too, Billie finds an unexpected friend. Harlan knows as soon as she enters the room that something bad happened to her over the summer, though he never asks what. He is just there for her in his own quiet way. And soon the twosome becomes a threesome.

Billie Standish Was Here covers years in Billie's life. It is not a book about rape. It is a book about forgiveness and understanding, but most of all, it is a book about the healing power of love and the saving power of friendship. This is a book to be savored and reread often.

Musings:

I loved this book for many reasons, but I fell in love with its voice and humor. Here are some quotes chosen because they tell as much about Billie as they do about the person she's describing:

For a long time I was mostly invisible. That was okay, though. Once you've figured out you can't do anything right it's just good sense not to call undue notice your way. Why step out of the shadows and get yelled at for blocking somebody's light?

Nothing much bigger than a silent fart can get past the neighbors in a town this size, though, so I suppose I was looked after in a way.

About her mother:

I could see her with my eyes closed, slicing the air with her hip bones and elbows as she crossed me off the list in her head and moved on. Another chore taken care of.

Describing Curtis:

...his manners were neat almost to the point of finicky. Outside of TV, I had never seen anyone raise their pinky as they lifted their glass and I never could have imagined it with a dirty fingernail...For some reason, I remembered the wolf in "Little Red Riding Hood," who put on clothes and talked and was a good enough imitator to pass for a human being.

Describing her teacher:

There just doesn't seem to be enough of a person there to account for half of a couple.

Discovering love:

I don't believe in love at first sight. It might make for an easy shortcut if somebody's writing a movie, but in real life I think it's nothing more than hormones performing a parlor trick. I have come to believe that real love is like learning to read, one letter at a time, sounding things out until it all comes together. It takes time to build, step after step. And I know that was the exact moment Harlan climbed up that first step for me.

About Miss Lydia:

She left me knowing who I am without looking into anyone's mirror.

Printz Committee, are you listening?

Hooray for the Cybils Awards, which selected Billie Standish as one of the finalists in the YA Fiction category.

I have also posted a booktalk for this book. If you like it and use it, I'd love to know how it went over with your group.

(This post was edited slightly on 5/1/08 to reflect the Cybil Award nomination.)

No Deposit? No Return!

Returnable Girl by Pamela Lowell
5Q 4P, J S (for those who need to know, some swearing, some sexual situations involving secondary characters)

I seem to be on a run of this-makes-my-heart-ache books right now, and this book is right up there at the top of them. The writing is strong and you'd have to be made of granite not to feel something when you read Ronnie's story. This is one of two books I've read recently where the voice is so strong and authentic it makes you forget it's actually being told by an adult writer, not the teenager who is supposedly telling it. (The other book is Billie Standish Was Here, which I will write about soon.)

When I think back on the times my parents left us alone for a few hours, I don't remember ever being scared. We never had a doubt that they were coming back soon. Ronnie isn't so lucky. The first time she remembers her mother leaving her, she was five years old. When I was five, my older brothers watched over me. At five, Ronnie was taking care of her little brother. Whew.

Flash forward seven or eight years. Ronnie isn't taking care of her little brothers anymore, because her little brothers and her mother are all the way across the country, in Alaska. When they packed up and left, there was "no room" for Ronnie, so she was left behind. That probably had something to do with her mother's boyfriend Kenny, since Kenny hated Ronnie and the feeling was mutual. Ronnie knows her mother is an alcoholic drug abuser, but she doesn't care. She desperately wants to be with her mother and brothers. But instead, Ronnie has been shunted from foster home to foster home. Alison is her tenth placement, her eleventh if you count the time she stayed with her uncle and aunt. She's been returned from all of those placements, because nobody would put up with a girl who throws things, lies, steals, and says hateful things. Nobody will put up with a girl as angry as she is. But maybe, just maybe, Alison will be different.

Alison has strict rules for Ronnie. No throwing, no lying, no stealing. But Alison has something else for Ronnie, too: love and understanding. No matter how much trouble Ronnie gets herself into, Alison is there for her. In fact, Alison would like to adopt her. Ronnie is all mixed up. Her mother constantly makes excuses for why Ronnie can't come join them. She's in and out of halfway houses and therapy. She promises not to drink or do drugs, and then does. She makes appointments with Ronnie and then breaks them. On the other hand, Alison is rock solid. She doesn't make promises she doesn't intend to keep. And Ronnie, even though she's afraid to trust anyone, knows that Alison would never leave her. Still, she longs to be with her mother. Should she let Alison adopt her, or should she hold out for the day when her mother will send for her?

As if this wasn't enough for her to deal with, Ronnie also has to deal with a typical problem of an eighth grader: friends and popularity. Cat, her only friend, lives down the road. She's plump, a little dirty, and definitely considered odd by all the other kids, especially the popular ones. But Cat gets Ronnie, and Ronnie gets her. It's pretty clear from the things Cat tells her that she knows about messed up families. But Ronnie desperately wants to be part of the in crowd. She wants to be best friends with Paige, the most popular girl in eighth grade. But a friend of Cat's has no chance of ever being allowed into Paige's inner circle, so Ronnie distances herself from Cat and works her way into Paige's good graces. The thing is, the way Paige and her gang treat Cat (and make her treat Cat) makes Ronnie feel guilty. And the more she hangs around with Paige, the more ugliness she sees in her. Is being popular worth feeling guilty and doing things she knows are wrong? At least for now, the answer is yes.

In a book that is all about relationships, Ronnie's relationship with God is not to be overlooked. The one good thing her aunt Raylene gave her was a belief in God and in the power of prayer. Ronnie finds comfort in going to church, and its teachings are often in the back of her mind, even if she doesn't always manage to live by them. But when Francis, a youth minister she once knew, comes into her life again, it is a shining moment. When she doesn't dare trust Alison, when her mother disappoints her, Francis is there for her. And it suits her just fine that Francis is there for Alison, too.

The book (written in journal form) takes place over just about a year, and in that time, Ronnie goes through quite a bit. She is betrayed and betrays herself, and she learns to forgive. She learns what it means to be a friend. She begins to trust, and she even begins to allow herself to love and be loved. Most importantly, she discovers what she wants and where she belongs.

Musings: (Some examples of why I liked Ronnie's voice so much. I've found half a dozen things I'd like to quote dealing with her relationships with Alison, Cat, and Paige, but to get the full effect, I'd need to quote four or five paragraphs. Instead of giving you the main course, these shorter passages will have to act as appetizers.)

It didn't surprise me in the least that she would threaten to send me back; eventually, it seems, they all do. Even Alison, with her long, graying hair and her plump stomach that looks soft and cushiony like a broken-in sofa you might want to curl up on someday.

Paige's eyes are her best feature (when they aren't judging you). [It's clear throughout the book that Ronnie knows things she doesn't want to admit to herself. The truth about Paige is one of those things.]

Britnee and Sarika are always with Paige. I mean *constantly* because they are the three most popular girls at school. Sometimes it's like they are one person instead of three. I stood off near the curb, hoping that they wouldn't notice me -- or maybe hoping that they *would*, but in a nice way for a change.

I hadn't realized anyone was keeping track [of how many times she wore her Tshirt last week]. Of course she wouldn't know that wearing this shirt make makes me feel close to my mother, who sent it to me for my birthday last year. It has a picture of Mount McKinley on it and the words, "The Great One." I don't care if it's oversized, stained, and faded -- it's one of my favorites.

Cat gets made fun of by just about everybody at school and it must get to her pretty bad. Sometimes after they tease her I swear there's a deep, sad emptiness in her eyes, right where the happiness is supposed to be.

Midge [her social worker] was right. I won't [use a suitcase]. That's because people who use suitcases are coming back home. It would mean I had a place to come back *to*. And I don't. Not yet. (I wonder if I ever will.)

That's when I made a deal. If Alison would let me stay, then I promised God I would try to be a better person. I would try to be good again, just like I used to be...I would figure out a way to be so good that all that goodness would make its way all the way up to Alaska, and my mother would feel it and know it deep in her heart, and then she would come to get me and take me there to live with her forever (or at least until I was eighteen).

What I didn't tell him was how much I hate [my mother] sometimes. How I imagine myself going up there to her stupid, not-big-enough apartment and punching her in her lazy pot-smoking fact -- until she's black-and-blue and begging for mercy. I hate her so much for putting me through this. For not caring enough to even try.


Links:

It's more factual than chatty, but Pamela Lowell has a web site. (She has a MySpace page, too.)

Here's an interview with Pamela Lowell from Little Willow on her blog, Slayground.


If you liked this book, you might like:

The Year of My Miraculous Disappearance by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Cynnie's mother is nearly always passed out drunk. If she's not passed out, she's working on it. That leaves Cynnie to care for her three-year-old brother, who has Down's Syndrome. But Cynnie loves Bill to death, so she doesn't mind taking care of him. She does mind that her mother doesn't take care of either of them, and she does care when her grandparents take Bill away. In fact, she cares so much, especially about the latter, that she can't deal with him being gone. The only thing that makes her feel better is alcohol. It makes everything blurry and takes away the pain. But it never takes away her longing for Bill, so she is determined to get him back. How she goes about this and what happens as a result is heart-wrenching but ultimately hopeful.

You can find out more about this book on Catherine Ryan Hyde's web site or read a review at TeenReads.com.

The Wednesday Wars, briefly

The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt
4Q 2P M/J


For a few reasons, I'm not going to try to write a full review of this book. Instead, I'm posting a few thoughts and reactions.

1) I think it's a book that, like the author's Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, will generally resonate more with adults than kids.

2) Some kids will really enjoy it.

3) The publisher did the book no favors with the cover design.

4) I love Mrs. Baker! She has got to go down as one of the best teachers in the annals of children's (YA included) literature.

5) Did I love Holling's dad? Yeah. Um. Not so much. And Mom needs a backbone for Christmas. (I think Santa might just see to that.)

5) Holling is a thoroughly likable kid. He's funny and sensitive. I enjoyed watching him mature throughout the book. My heart pinched a bit seeing just how perceptive he is about what is likely to be coming down the pike at the Perfect House. But I am confident that he's going to be just fine. (But probably not an architect.)

6) There are a couple of character arcs that I didn't quite buy. It's not that I didn't like where they wound up, it's just that I found the changes too fast and somewhat unlikely.

7) I'm a sap, again. The lump in my throat during the scene at the bus station was the size of a Granny Smith apple. It was back during the scene at the airport at the end. Frankly, from the bus station on, the lump was pretty much camping out right next to my tonsils.

8) I laughed, too.

Things I'll remember: yellow tights with feathers, skinned knees and sneakers, peace signs and face paint flowers, a lit candle, a gym that isn't empty, rats, Yankee Stadium, cream puffs, a dried up rose tied with a ribbon, strawberries.


(I shouldn't say "I'm a sap" when a book makes me emotional. That's what books should do. I think I need a new tag.)

When the Shark Bites, It Bites

Shark Girl by Kelly Bingham
4Q 4P, M/J/S

I admit it. This book had me near tears more than once, even though I was trying hard not to get emotional. (I feel like such a sap when I cry over something I'm reading.)

I also admit that I came to this book thinking it smacked of ripping off Bethany Hamilton's story (Soul Surfer, and that annoyed (even offended) me a bit. But the reviews were good, and I know it's the kind of story that a lot of people like to read, so I bought it for our teen collection. I wasn't going to read it, but I needed a book I could read quickly at lunch. Since this is written in free verse, letters, and phone calls, it looked like a very fast read. So I took it, a little bit grudgingly. Six pages into the book, I was hooked and having trouble swallowing my food over the lump in my throat.

The last thing that Jane expects when she, her mother, and her brother go to the beach one June day is that she'll wake up from a coma ten days later to discover that her right arm has been amputated just above the elbow after a harrowing shark attack leaves her arm so badly mutilated it can't be saved. The cards and letters that flood into the hospital can't begin to ease her pain, anger, and depression. Why her? Why couldn't it have happened to someone else? She loves to cook. She's an award-winning artist. She needs her arm! These people who are writing to her can't begin to comprehend what she is feeling. Why can't they leave her alone to mourn the person she'll never be again?

Kelly Bingham does a terrific job making it clear how such a tragic event doesn't just alter the life of the person it happens to. It is almost as hard to read about Jane's mother and brother's attempts to deal with the aftermath as it is to read about Jane's anger and despair. Where do you draw the line between being sympathetic and supportive and and TOO sympathetic and supportive? When is it time to force someone to move forward? When Jane's brother lashes out at her for expecting everyone to wait on her, it's both a shocking and liberating moment, for them and for the reader. The ways that Michael encourages (and forces) her to learn to do things for herself were touching and empowering. And I positively ached for Jane's mother as she tried to encourage Jane to go out in public, to draw again, to get back to as much of her old life and self as possible. There's a poem called "Constant" that is painful to read no matter whose perspective you read it from. It's equally moving to read about Jane's frustrations with her friends. Are they insensitive, or is Jane too sensitive? All of these poems and conversations, as well as Jane's tender moments with a little boy from the hospital, make for a very emotional read.

A few favorite moments:

(from "Leaving", p. 84, as Jane prepares to leave the hospital)
The problem is
life outside the window
is life outside.
Not here.
People out there
are out there.
Too many.

The eyes of the doctors
are familiar.
The kind of seeing I can almost live with.
It's their job, taking care of people like me.
I was welcome here.
I fit in.
Out there,
I won't.

Whew! If that doesn't communicate how scary it is to know you have to face people who are used to seeing you a different way, I don't know what would.

Then there's the poem called "The Web". Jane's discovering the world of Internet support groups, and she's not at all receptive:


Motivational speakers.
Forums.
Chat rooms.

And overwhelmingly:
Most of the time, we become
a better person than we were.

I was fine
with who I was.

I will never
become one of these heroic
icons, spreading hope
from the other side,
one hand waving.


I could feel Jane's resistance pushing out at me from the pages of the book.

"Moat, Overlooking" is a powerful poem depicting an artist's despair at knowing she'll never again be the artist she used to be. She's realizing that the things she used to draw aren't the subjects she would draw now:


These pictures
are from someone else's world,
someone else's memories,
not mine.

What, then, is now?
If I can't return to
Horse, Grazing,
am I doomed to be a
van Gogh imitation?
Tortured, wrecked, surviving
pain through the art of my darkest attic,
creations spun from the haunted memories
of the Shark Girl
trying to accommodate with her left hand?
Will the subject matter
be endless grays and white-capped
waves, gaunt faces, thin children,
rain?

I have no legs
to cross the bridge
toward Sunflower, Blooming,
and return home.


Eventually, Jane does start showing signs that she might be able to move forward. I liked this particular poem in part because it shows Jane now able to think about people other than herself and to recognize their sincere desire to help, when before she was too angry about too much to be able to do so.


(from "Tools", p. 223)
Fingering my new tools
I think about the people
who devote their lives
to inventing stuff like this.
Things that make life
a bit easier.

I wonder who they are

and why they invent things like this

and if they ever hear the words

"thank you".

Seeing Jane develop new interests and discovering that she doesn't have to leave her old ones behind makes this a moving, inspiring, and empowering story. I can't speak for Bethany Hamilton or anyone else who has ever lost a limb, but I can say that this book really helped me understand what they and their families might be going through and gave me some things to think about. I'm glad I ordered it and I'm glad that I wanted that quick read at lunch. I'm sure that I'll find myself recommending this book to a lot of readers in the future.


Post edited to include some links, including a very interesting interview of Kelly Bingham by Cynthia Leitich Smith (one of these days I'm going to finish my blog post on Smith's Tantalize, which I'm having a really hard time writing) and Bingham's web site. (In the interview, Kelly Bingham talks about how she got the idea to write this book, and Bethany Hamilton's name does come up. I was happy to see that she actually finished the book a few days before Bethany Hamilton was injured.)